Skip to main content
Bread

Butter Cakes for Tea

Butter cakes for tea are small, lightly sweetened cakes made with milk, eggs, cream, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Butter Cakes for Tea

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, stir together the milk, beaten eggs, cream, dissolved baking soda, salt, and melted butter.

  2. Gradually add sifted flour until you achieve a thick batter.

Cook and serve

  1. Drop the batter in thin round cakes onto a buttered pan or griddle.

  2. Turn the cakes while baking and cook until browned.

  3. Serve piled on a plate with a little butter on each.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness to the cakes as they set.
Baking soda
Reacts with acidity in the batter to produce gas, helping the cakes rise and lighten.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the thick batter together as the cakes set.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and gives the batter its liquid base and tender texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness, flavor, and a softer crumb.

The step that matters

Turning the cakes while baking. Cooking the cakes on one side only can leave the centers raw or the surface over-browned. Turning them once the underside sets lets heat reach the middle and browns both faces evenly.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

CornbreadCornbread345 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding336 recipesMilk Bread RollsMilk Bread Rolls242 recipesPotato BreadPotato Bread124 recipes